Dinesh D'Souza takes out the brass knuckles and takes on 'The Enemy at Home'

Reviewed by Michiko KakutaniFebruary 18, 2007

With this book, Dinesh D'Souza, the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has officially become the Ann Coulter of the think-tank set.

“The Enemy at Home” is filled with willfully incendiary – and preposterous – assertions that “the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11”; that the left is “secretly allied” with the movement that Osama bin Laden and Islamic radicals represent “to undermine the Bush administration and American foreign policy”; and that “the left wants America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill.”

BOOK REVIEW

The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11
Dinesh D'Souza; Doubleday, 333 pages, $26.95

He writes that American prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib “are comparable to the accommodations in midlevel Middle Eastern hotels” in terms of cleanliness, food and amenities, and argues that abuse at Abu Ghraib did not reflect a disregard for human rights, but rather “the sexual immodesty of liberal America.” (“Lynndie England and Charles Graner were two wretched individuals from red America who were trying to act out the fantasies of blue America.”)

Whereas “Illiberal Education,” the book that made D'Souza a conservative star back in 1991, had some illuminating points to make about the excesses of political correctness on college campuses, this embarrassing volume is an out-and-out partisan screed made up of illogical arguments, distorted and cherry-picked information, ridiculous generalizations and nutty asides. It's a nasty stewpot of intellectually untenable premises and irresponsible speculation that frequently reads like a “Saturday Night Live” parody of the crackpot right. It gives conservatism a bad name while viciously throwing oil on the partisan fires already burning in red state/blue state America.

D'Souza's central thesis is an absurd one, constructed around two clashing arguments: 1) that the American left is allied to the Islamic radical movement to undermine the Bush White House and American foreign policy; and 2) that “the left is the primary reason for Islamic anti-Americanism as well as the anti-Americanism of other traditional cultures around the world” because “liberals defend and promote values that are controversial in America and deeply revolting to people in traditional societies, especially in the Muslim world.”

By “cultural left,” D'Souza says he does not mean the entire Democratic Party or all liberals, but he includes on his list of “domestic insurgents” not just the usual lefty suspects, like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, but also mainstream politicians like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Robert Byrd and Jimmy Carter, and journalists like Garry Wills, Seymour Hersh and several New York Times columnists.

To flesh out his theories, D'Souza tosses out lots of assertions based on false information, partial truths and unrepresentative anecdotes. For instance, he repeatedly asserts that Osama bin Laden hates America because “the cultural left has fostered a decadent American culture,” not because of U.S. foreign policy. He says Muslims couldn't possibly have seen a threat to Islam in the presence of United States troops in Saudi Arabia, because the American base there “is more than five hundred miles from Islam's holy sites”; nor could they be driven to suicide attacks by the Israeli-Palestinian situation because Israel is but “a small irritant within the vast expanse of Islamic territory.”

He ignores the host of experts like the former CIA officer Michael Scheuer and the terrorism analyst Peter Bergen who have cited, as bin Laden's chief grievances against America, the continued presence of American troops on the Arabian peninsula after the first gulf war, the United States' sustained support of Israel and its backing of regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, regarded as apostates by al-Qaeda. He also ignores the observation made by Lawrence Wright in his energetically researched book “The Looming Tower” that bin Laden does not seem driven by a hatred of American culture, but has even allowed his younger sons to play Nintendo and has shown Hollywood thrillers to trainees in al-Qaeda camps.

As for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, D'Souza writes that “the important point is that 50 million Afghans and Iraqis are free, and for the first time in their history, they have a chance to control their own destiny,” and further that “liberals tend to emphasize the negative and take genuine relish in the failures of American foreign policy.”

He ignores the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan, which many Bush critics pin on the administration's decision to shift its focus to Iraq. He ignores the plethora of reports about deepening sectarian divisions in Iraq and a worsening security situation. And he ignores polls indicating that a majority of Americans – not just leftists or liberals – disapprove of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

For that matter, D'Souza leaves out anything that might reflect poorly on the current Bush administration, while zeroing in on anything that might reflect poorly on Democrats or liberals. He excoriates Bill Clinton for not doing enough to get bin Laden, but says little about the failures of the Bush White House to bear down on al-Qaeda in the wake of early 2001 warnings from the counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke and an Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily brief titled “Osama bin Laden Determined to Attack the U.S.”

He similarly denounces liberals for promoting ideas like women's rights around the world. This meddling, he argues, angers Muslims who see such foreign forms of liberation as undermining their religion and traditional family values. But he praises the Bush administration for trying to export democracy to Iraq.

In the course of this book, D'Souza rages against the separation of church and state in American public life, and denounces what he calls “Secular Warriors” who are “trying to eradicate every public trace of the religious and moral values that most of the world lives by.” He contends that freedom in America “has come to be defined by its grossest abuses” and complains that in movies and television shows, “the white businessman in the suit is usually the villain,” “prostitutes are always portrayed more favorably and decently than anyone who criticizes them” and “homosexuals are typically presented as good-looking and charming, and unappealing features of the gay lifestyle are either ignored or presented in an amusing light.”

In this shrill, slipshod book, D'Souza often sounds as if he has a lot in common with those radical Middle Eastern mullahs who are eager to subject daily life to religious strictures and want to curtail individuals' freedoms and civil liberties.

It's an interpretation he does not deny: “Yes,” he writes, “I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I'd have to confess that I'm closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap.”